Requisites

Additional Requirements

Students who are not from the School of Computer Science must have permission from both Computer Science and their home School to enrol.

Aims

The module aims to give an overview of the processes involved in taking a concept onto a product chip. It also illustrates some of the choices available to an implementer. Finally, the practicals are intended to give some experience of the flow, the frustration and the satisfaction of making a working device.

Overview

The module provides an overview of the design and integration of computer systems onto chips. Industrial-grade CAD tools are used to design a logic system, integrate it into a larger system and realise it on a programmable device. These skills are in short supply and in high demand in the industry today. It can also be very satisfying to build a real, visibly working system!

Learning outcomes

Employability skills

Analytical skills

Innovation/creativity

Problem solving

Other

Assessment methods

Written exam - 50%

Practical skills assessment - 50%

Syllabus

The practical part of the course involves migrating the design of a moderately complex FSM into Verilog, integrating it with other parts of a system-on-chip, verifying that it operates correctly and demonstrating it working. The intention is to use a graphics drawing example design so that the final result can easily be seen on its own display.

The lectures are planned approximately as follows:

Introduction

The scale of the problem and what VLSI 'looks like', inside.

Verilog

Some revision plus some features you may not have met before.

Functional Simulation

Test harness construction and making things 'realistic'.

Debugging

What to look for and how to find it.

Tool flows

The sort of tools used to get source code into silicon and how to get the best from them.